From Loring Knoblauch’s review of the exhibition “Jimmy DeSana | 101 Nudes” at CLAMP:

While DeSana would go on to make plenty of innovative and risk-taking nudes in the next few decades, particularly in color, there is something quietly radical about this early project that remains engaging. At the time, few photographers were using the commonplace surroundings of the residential suburbs to host an undercover rebellion like this one, where the nude body has been used to hijack our assumptions about suburban life. DeSana’s intentional manipulation of a casual aesthetic was similarly sophisticated for such a young photographer; making throw away snapshots of young bodies is relatively easy, but appropriating a blown out flash lit eye to incisively wrestle with prevailing cultural norms is altogether trickier. In this way, “101 Nudes” is both easy to like and deceptively thought-provoking, entertaining us with its deadpan irreverence and challenging us to see how the the classical nude form could be artistically leveraged in a new direction.

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Browse the exhibition “Jimmy DeSana | 101 Nudes” at CLAMP